Japan’s Second Fire in 24 Hours Kills 5 People

TOKYO (AP) _ Japan’s second major fire in just over 24 hours killed five people in a two-story, wooden apartment building in Osaka early Wednesday morning, police said.

The blaze swept through the ″Toyo House″ at 2:20 a.m. said an Osaka state police official who refused to be identified.

All 19 other residents of the building escaped unharmed, he said, adding that police were investigating the cause of the fire.

Meanwhile, police and firefighters recovered the bodies of a man and a woman from the charred debris of the wooden Daitoken Hotel one day after it burned down in the resort spa of Atagawa, 81 miles west of Tokyo.

The recovery brought the number of confirmed dead to 21, according to Takashi Osuga of the Shizuoka state police.

There were 25 guests and three employees in the hotel when the fire broke out around 2 a.m. Tuesday.

Osuga said the recovered bodies were so badly burned that no positive identifications had been made.

The cause of the fire has yet to be found, and Osuga said police plan to question hotel officials to determine whether appropriate fire safety and alarm systems had been maintained.

It was the worst hotel fire in Japan since 32 people were killed in a fire at the Hotel New Japan in Tokyo on Feb. 8, 1982.